NASCAR Truck team success lags in Cup circles
Jim Smith's driver is 30thin the points race goinginto Sunday's Dodge/Save Mart 350.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Someday, Jim Smith would like to be viewed by his fellow Winston Cup team owners the way he is by those in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series: as a winner.
Smith is the only owner in the truck series who has had at least one entry in every race since the series began in 1995 and has won at least one race in each of the nine seasons, including 2003.
Ultra's 27 race wins are second only to Roush Racing's 28, and Smith said, "I'm sure we'll take over that this year."
Smith's truck team gave him the impetus to try his hand as a Winston Cup team owner.
"With that success [in trucks], it gave me the credibility to attract sponsorship for Winston Cup racing," Smith said. "There's no way I'd be in Winston Cup if it wasn't for the trucks."
When the field takes the green flag Saturday to start the O'Reilly 200 at Memphis Motorsports Park, the 200th race in truck series history, it will include two of Smith's Ultra Motorsports Dodges.
Near the top
Ted Musgrave is fifth in the points, Jason Leffler is 11th, and both already have one win this year.
"He knows the ins and outs, and he definitely knows the ups and downs of this sport, and he takes it in stride," Musgrave said of his boss. "He knows if you have a bad day, if it's not self-inflicted, that's just the way racing goes sometimes.
"But, there again, he's a car owner that says, 'Well guys, what can we do to prevent that from happening again?' He strives for excellence, and that's the way you need to be."
Smith has been a lifelong devotee of racing. When he was a teenager, he used to spend summers with former NASCAR driving star and team owner Junior Johnson.
"And, I was an off-road racer myself," he said.
"I won the Baja 1000 five times, the 2000 once. Wheel manufacturing is my main business and I'm just an automotive nut. I like cars and I like racing."
Smith and three off-road racing friends -- car dealer Dick Landfield, aviation company owner and politician Jim Venable, and race horse owner Frank "Scoop" Vessels -- were the catalysts behind the truck series.
Built first truck
"The four of us came up with the idea of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and actually built the first truck," he said. They presented it to then-NASCAR president Bill France Jr.
"He thought we were nuts, but one thing led to another and that's the truck series today," Smith said.
Smith and his pals had been racing Ford pickup trucks in the desert and couldn't help but notice how popular the trucks were.
The series has been successful and instrumental in bringing some drivers into racing.
"If the truck series hadn't started, people like Mike Skinner, Ron Hornaday, Mike Bliss, Scott Riggs, they'd still be racing some little dirt track somewhere in Ohio," he said.
The success of his truck teams helped move Smith into Winston Cup racing in 1998. He spent that season and 1999 in partnership with Jim Mattei, but went solo in 2000.
So far, the Cup team has produced little in the way of results. With Michael Waltrip, Kevin Lepage, Robby Gordon, Musgrave, Casey Atwood and Leffler moving in and out of his entries, Smith's team had one top-10 finish -- by Gordon in 2001 -- to show for its efforts going into this season.
A partnership last season with fellow team owner Ray Evernham also failed to get Smith's Cup team over the hump, and the two split in November.
Spencer on board
Over the winter, Smith hired driver Jimmy Spencer and crew chief Tommy Baldwin.
"We progressed with Casey last year, but the deal with Ray didn't work," Smith said. "Ray and I put a lot of effort into that and it just didn't work.
"This year, with bringing Tommy and Jimmy on board, the three of us, our personalities are a lot alike. We race hard and we play hard. We just have fun doing it."
It's been slow progress, but Spencer -- fired at the end of last year by Chip Ganassi Racing -- has two top-10 finishes in 15 starts, including a fourth-place last month in the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. The driver is 30th in the points going into Sunday's Dodge/Save Mart 350 in Sonoma, Calif.
"We've run good at so many tracks, and we feel good about what we've done, even though we're 30th in the points," Spencer said.
"Tommy has assembled a bunch of good people, and I get a lot of pleasure out of driving the car. I know we can win this season."